Archive for the ‘seasteading’ category

I have a profound admiration for Peter Thiel. There are a large number of brilliant thinkers walking the planet today. Peter Thiel, in my mind, is among them.

So, as the USA Freedom Act spins up and the Patriot Act spins apart and companies such as Apple plant their feet firmly, and rightly so in my mind, in the “strong encryption IS privacy” camp… I can’t help but pondering the societal tug of war going on when an AHA! moment hits. If corporations are people…

What if Apple Became a Country?

ala something like Seasteading which Peter Thiel has given considerable thought. Look at it on a couple merits.

Apple, as a country, has something like the 10th largest economy in the world.

AAPL could repatriate it’s own cash without the tax hit and reinvest in itself on its own tax terms.

Apple could…………………… (fill in the blank)

It’s a really wacky idea. Granted. And then there’s all that political baloney that comes with. But, a NEW country, founded on doing the right thing and iterating and deprecating laws like old, inefficient code. A concept like that certainly has appeal to me. Do countries even have to have soil any longer? The definition of so many things are being reframed that I wonder if the concept of a “border” is due for a change. Some Californians want to see a redrawing of their boundaries such that California becomes multiple new states. Interesting. Why couldn’t one of them be the Sovereign Republic of Apple? Yes, I know, it might be a different country surrounded by… The U.S. on all sides. The Vatican is a country. It’s surrounded on all sides by Italy. But, then, people might say, who would recognize Apple internationally? It wouldn’t be part of the U.N.! So, England isn’t part of the U.N. Either is Ireland or Scotland. The U.K. is. But, those countries are not.

See, what constitutes a country to many really… doesn’t matter. What matters is a modicum of international recognition and a declaration of independence. A governing law and a geopolitical boundary. My contention is “the ground” bit. How MUCH ground is necessary? Could the privately owned Apple Campus be declared “the ground”? How about an uncontested patch of dirt on Luna (our lunar neighbor)? Why do we HAVE to have a boundary? Nowhere does it say we have to have a capital city.

For a company that prides itself on Thinking Differently, I wonder if our buddies at Apple have ever thought of creating a new country of their own?